Penn grad students file petition with NLRB, seek to unionize

Graduate student working at the University of Pennsylvania moved toward forming a union Tuesday as they filed an election petition with the National Labor Relations Board.

The petition — which requires the assent of at least 30 percent of the university's graduate student workers — could trigger a vote on whether to join the American Federation of Teachers, a national union.

This is the second time in 15 years Penn's graduate employees have attempted to unionize.

A 2003 effort died on the vine when the NLRB decided in a similar case that graduate students at private universities were not eligible to form unions, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian.

In 2016, the NLRB reversed itself and ruled that a group of student workers at Columbia University could collectively bargain. That ruling set off a burst of campus unionizing at elite universities such as Princeton, Harvard, and the University of Chicago.

For more details on the groups behind the unionization efforts, go to Newsworks.org.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal